Thursday

Faith Feminisms is back this first week of Advent with timely meditations on how and why #bodiesmatter. Come by to read, and be sure to link up any old or new post fitting with the theme of embodied life and faith practice. We'd love to hear from a spectrum of voices.

Here's an excerpt from my piece:

Looking back, I felt most capable and myself not in my body at all but inside my head, which school and church both encouraged. My faith was something I believed fiercely and intellectualized, but it was not something I specifically learned to embody. Yes, Jesus wanted us to serve and follow with our whole selves, but there was a clearly implied dichotomy between flesh and spirit and a hierarchy of body to soul.

The stuff of spirit was holy and eternal and good.

The stuff of bodies, irrevocably tainted by sin, was lesser, fleeting, and ultimately passing away.

In the stories handed down around campfires, small groups, and lock-ins, Jesus’ perfect divinity trumped his dirt-under-the-fingernails humanity every time. If Christ’s own body didn’t matter much in the narrative of redemption, why in God’s name would mine?